Serenity
by Waris
Summary: What we might have seen when the scenes faded to black, or would like to have seen had the cameras been allowed to roll a few minutes longer.


TITLE: "Cheesecake Mornings"  
AUTHOR: Haili (aka: Waris)  
PAIRINGS: Benson/Stabler friendship.  
SEASON: Season Three.  
WARNINGS/SPOILERS: Post "Wrath". Wee bit 'o' language, wee bit 'o' angst.  
ARCHIVE: Don't care :) But an email informing me where it's going would be nice. And do try to preserve the headers.  
SERIES/SEQUEL: 1st installment in the "Serenity" Series.

SUMMARY: What we might have seen had the cameras been allowed to roll just a few minutes longer.

DISCLAIMERS: I don't own any of the characters of L&O: SVU. Never have. Don't ever want to (too much responsibility!). I'm just using them as a work avoidance tactic again.

_A/N- This is only my 3rd work of Fan Fiction, of any genre. :D I gladly welcome and would greatly appreciate any and all feedback. But go easy on the flaming tomatoes. :) Huge thanks to any and all that reviewed "Sibling Rivalry" and "Darkling"! The comments were very much appreciated and 99.9 of what encouraged me to try again with another. :)_

_Also, "Serenity" will be a series of post-episode tags and missing scenes in my attempt to wrap up loose ends with some semblance of calm, and add a bit of shippy fluffy goodness to the show. Each 'chapter' will be in regards to a different episode. Or, if I get creative, I'll just make them all their own stand-alone. We'll see. Feedback is welcome!_

_"**CHEESECAKE MORNINGS"**_

It had rained last night. The air was wet and smelled clean, rinsed of the fouler environmental obscurities that could hover over a large city. Pavement glistened silver as dawn collided with the remnants of the storm, and water pooled in occasional shallow puddles dotted the streets and sidewalks.

The sun wasn't quite strong enough to push through the clouds and the sky was a smoldering slate gray as sneakers slapped on concrete and Olivia Benson started to wind down from her jog. She wasn't a die-hard, do-it-in-the-snow, type jogger, but one of the ways she burned off stress was to exercise, and her apartment didn't oft lend the room needed to compensate for the amount of energy she had to diffuse.

This was one of those times.

To not only have a person fixated on you but to have this same person commit terrible crimes against people connected TO you because of what you were... The week had been one of the purest Hell conceivable for a person in her line of work. It was as if fate not only mocked the good she'd tried to do in her time, but it had twisted it, contorted it, turned it into something evil and then used it against her. And it hadn't just affected her, but it'd drug everyone around her down to her level where confidence and pride were replaced by doubt and self-depreciation.

Benson slowed from a jog to a brisk walk, her hands on her hips, and rounded the corner of her street. She shook her head, breathing slowly in through her nose and out through her mouth. She'd started this run this morning to move past those events, not dredge them back up and dwell. Dwelling only made her remember, and remembering only made her angry. Angry at herself, angry at her job, angry at her pa..

Olivia stopped four doors away from the one to her building as something pricked at finely honed senses. There was a car she did not recognize at a meter a few yards away. A car whose windshield was clear of the rain which dotted the others around it, which meant it hadn't been there overnight. Her breath coming out in little puffs of white in the chilly dawn air, Olivia slowly reached to the small of her back and extricated from the waistband of her sweatpants the small personal handgun she carried while not on duty. Turning the safety off and cocking it quietly, she positioned it squarely in front of her with both hands, trying to ignore how ... wrong it felt right now to have that metal touching her fingers. Sparing a couple of quick glances across the street and behind her to ensure those angles were clear, she readjusted her hold and moved forwards.

She could see a pair of shoes on her steps and her nerves readied themselves for a fight as she stepped clear of the bushes blocking her view.

"Hey whoa. Don't shoot." Elliot Stabler lifted his hands in a gesture of peace. There was a square white baker's box next to his leg. "Just me."

Olivia stared at him, then found her voice. "Reason enough to pull the trigger," she said a titch shakily as the vanishing adrenaline turned her legs to overcooked spaghetti and she stowed her gun. Goddamn him for scaring her, especially right now. In fact, damn him for even showing up. "The hell are you doing here, Stabler."

"So it's 'Stabler' again now is it?"

Neither had moved. He remained seated while she stayed standing on the sidewalk in front of him.

"I thought you'd have taken the hint last night." She had ignored her phone, disregarded the knocks on her door, all, she knew, from him.

Elliot shrugged. "Guy. You use diagrams with stick-figures or," he gave a little whistle and dashed one hand over his head and behind him.

"Go home, Elliot."

Stabler shook his head. The look on her face, her posture, told him that was the LAST thing he ought to do right now. He'd come here with a purpose, was sitting on her stoop for a reason, and he wasn't going to leave until he'd at least had his say. "You want in, gotta go through me first."

Olivia seemed to consider this for a second, then she shrugged. "Fine." She pulled her keys from the pocket of her pull-over hooded jacket and strode towards her door.

"Liv." Elliot's hand snaked up and caught her forearm before she could enter the door code that would let her into the building.

"What do you want?" She asked in a tired voice. She didn't look at him, but she didn't try to pull free of his grasp either. He took that as a good sign. Baby steps.

"Just to talk."

The tone of his voice gave Olivia pause. There was no self superiority in his voice, no stern demanding timbre to his words. Just an honest request.

Elliot sensed the shift in her defensive posturing and released her arm. A moment later Olivia found a spot on the stair above his.She was staring out at the deserted street in front of them, the silvery threads of sunlight trying to peek through the clouds catching the subtle highlights in her short hair. Her arms rested on her knees.

"So talk," she prompted quietly after a long silence between them both.

Elliot had been using her silence to compose in the best way he knew possible what he wanted to say, but in staring at her his presentation of it crumbled and all that he got out was a quiet, "I don't regret what I did."

Olivia gave a little snort and shook her head. "We're done here," she said and made to stand back up.

"I didn't say I'm not sorry," Elliot's words halted her. She looked at him and then settled back down on her step.

"But you don't regret doing it." She pushed him.

Elliot took a breath in through his nose and slowly released it. "No." He shook his head slightly. "No I don't."

"Elliot--"

"Look--"

They'd both spoken at the same time and the tangle left them silent, simply looking at one another and unsure who should go ahead. Knowing if he didn't finish this he'd lose his nerve (or possibly his temper) he moved ahead without inviting her to do so first. "Olivia, he could have killed you."

"You don't know that," came the immediate and expectedly defensive protest.

"No, we don't know that," he was man enough to concede. "That's the point. Up until it was over," he tactfully refrained from saying 'you shot him' after the 'up until', "we didn't know _what_ his agenda was. Everything pointed to you as his target, hell you had the goddamn FBI say that to your face. What'd you expect us to do, expect _me_ to do?"

Olivia turned to look at him. Him speaking first had opened a hole in the wall of solitude and silence she'd built around herself, finally allowing her to talk about it. "What did I expect? I expected you to respect my wishes on the security tail, Elliot. I expected you to trust me to take care of myself."

"Well that's pretty damn unfair--"

Her dark eyes flashed. "You--"

"--because it's not you I don't trust," he cut her off. "It's everyone else around you. Liv, when're you gonna stop this, this feministic 'I'm a big girl' attitude, huh?"

"Elliot, I'm not even going to satisfy that with a response."

"Hey." He took her arm in one hand, him actually getting physical with her making her turn to look at him. Her eyes shot glass into his but he didn't back down. "I'm not trying to cock an attitude with you okay? This isn't a pissing contest on who can handle themselves better in a fight...this is about me. This is about me worrying about you. Do I trust you to take care of yourself? Hell I wouldn't trust anyone more...it's the sick bastards out there I don't trust, all right? The ones that one day are going to force you to have to. I don't want you to wind up backed into that kind of corner. Ever. Not if I have a way to prevent it, at least for a little while."

This stopped Olivia's impending tirade on her self sufficiency and she stared at him for a full minute. God. How was she supposed to respond to _that_? She turned her head away from him and once again her eyes found the street.

For the second time this morning he released his hold on her arm and followed her gaze out into the lightening neighborhood. "Though if you really want a macho-off, you and Much can arm wrestle. Just so you, y'know, can feel tough."

Olivia made a face, shooting this look at him, and then rolled her eyes and looked away. She rested her chin on her hands as her arms rested on her knees and after a good five minutes of nothing, closed her eyes and sighed. "Elliot, I'm sorry." She inhaled deeply and opened her eyes, turning her head on her arms so she could look at him sitting next to her. "Everything he did, everyone he killed because of me..." she trailed off and then shrugged. "I've never felt so damn helpless. That detail was the proverbial straw, you know?" She shook her head. "I felt weak."

Elliot offered a small smile but didn't say anything. She didn't need to hear his platitudes, didn't need to be told she wasn't weak or that everything would be fiine, and everything else that might seem comforting he could have said at this point. She needed to believe such things herself first before hearing them from another person. And that would come in time.

"I was cruel," she went on of the things she'd said to him the night she'd discovered he'd set the detail on her.

He shrugged. "You were angry."

"That doesn't make it right, Elliot."

"Also doesn't make it personal."

Elliot held her eyes with his and, after a moment, she produced a thin smile, taking this acceptance of what had transpired between them that night exactly as he'd intended her to. Water under the bridge. He didn't need to hear her apology. Forgive and forget. Forgive - he'd done that part. Forget? That was her job, and though it would take a little longer, it'd come

The two sat in silence once more, though this time the length of it was not uncomfortable or tense. Seconds moved into minutes, minutes that just kept multiplying. A tenuous calm had descended over the pair and the only indication that either of them was ready to interrupt the healing was Olivia. She took a long breath, and then for the first time since finding her partner on her doorstep this morning, looked at him and her eyes _saw_ her partner again. She smiled, this one almost reaching her eyes fully, and gave a little jerk of her head at the white box she'd seen on the stair by his shoes earlier.

"You bring breakfast?"

"Better." Normal (or more normal, rather) interaction restored, Elliot picked the box up and pulled the flaps back. Inside lay a small round cheesecake, dark blueberry topping gooey and thick and spread all over the top of it.

Olivia arched an eyebrow. "Cheesecake."

"Sure why not." Elliot dug a couple of plastic forks out the bottom of the box. He handed one to her.

"It's five thirty in the morning," she said with an incredulous stare.

"So." He wiggled the fork and she chuckled. There was a significant pause during which he understood her accepting this fork to mean a lot more than that she was simply willing to indulge in a guilty pleasure with him.

She was ready to heal with him.

Her movements deliberate, Olivia reached across her legs and pulled the fork from his fingers. She watched as he dug his own fork into the cheesecake and pulled the dessert off, licking the gooey topping from the plastic prongs. "Elliot."

"Yeah." He looked at her, a bit of topping in the corner of his mouth.

She smiled and a quiet, "Thanks," drifted across to him.

He simply smiled back and then gestured inside the box. "Can't go home to Kath with any of this left," he said by way of flat telling her to get to it. "I'll never see it again."

Chuckling, Olivia dug her fork in and pulled a bit out, a blueberry plopping off and landing in the palm of her hand as she brought the fork to her mouth. She could not remember any cheesecake ever tasting quite like this. Quite this good. Quite as ... filling. They ate quietly for several minutes as the sky got lighter and the street got busier. Drained but feeling lighter than she had in days, Olivia took the vocal initiative this time.

"So if a red sky at night means 'sailor's delight', and a red sky in the morning means 'sailors take warning'," she began, her voice muffled around her latest mouthful. "What do you think cheesecake at dawn means?"

Elliot paused only long enough to lick a dripping blueberry from the end of his fork. Then with a look her way, dug his fork in again.

"I think it means it'll be a good day."

**End**


End file.
